Dabton – May 30th 1871
My dear Papa,
I owe a letter to you more especially, as unluckily I missed seeing you at the door at the last moment when I started off in front with the luggage, and so did not wish you a comfortable goodbye. It is so lovely here now that it is a great pity you couldn’t have come just for a day or two to see it. What a different place it seems from what it is in late autumn as I had always seen it hitherto! We are out of doors all day long, and the children are as blooming as roses, even little Mimai has recovered her natural colour and spirits. Miss Mohun is expected tomorrow, and I daresay Connie will not be sorry to get her back as she is fond of her music lessons and has quite left them off since she has been away. Yesterday we drove all along the river further than I had ever been before; it was extremely pretty, but Tilly found it rather too fatiguing. John is gone to spend the day at Speddoch to see after things there. Their new tenant only enters into possession in August. Mrs Maxwell is still visiting in England and not expected back for some time. I hope Mama is not tiring herself too much with her preparations, and that you have been able to drive over with her and Ela to Hermiston, to see that beautiful garden once more. Here there are no flowers on any of the flowering shrubs this year: not a single lilac or labernum, & scarcely a horse chesnut – only the rhododendrons promise well, and are just beginning. Please tell Mama that the gooseberries, new potatoes and lettuce she sent were much appreciated; there is plenty of asparagus now in the garden, and peas and everything else growing apace. What seems slowest in recovering from the effects of the frost are the beech trees – all along the railway coming, it was strange to see rows of bright brown trees as in autumn, mixed with the fresh green ones, and I suppose their foliage will be poor all summer in consequence. Mamie thanks Mama for her letter of this morning – We have just been reading the details of the fate of the fates of poor Archbishop of Paris, <?> l’Abbé du Guerry, and probably many other honest and good men shot by these wretches – and it is the more sad as it seems the deliverers were in time to save more than a hundred others who were just on the point of sharing the same fate. It does not seem to be becoming any clearer yet what future government will be fixed on for France – The whole question is so surrounded with difficulties – but it is particularly unfortunate that the late events will naturally lead to a priestly and Jesuitical re-action again, as in the first restoration, which succeeded so badly.
Everybody here sends their love – Tot was very proud of his letter from Grand Papa. He seems to have no intention of relinquishing his name as yet.
And now, goodbye, dear Papa, as it is post time – Your most affectionate
Monie